While it is clear enough that an increase in labor supply from immigration exerts suppressive effects on wages, is it enough to chase working-aged males out of the labor force? The quantity of labor in the economy is subject to the same supply and demand considerations as other commodities.

But aside from wages, does immigration put downward pressure on U.S. native-born labor force participation itself, as Vice Presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance said in an interview with the New York Times, especially among males? 

Vance (R-Ohio) cut to the chase on this dynamic with interviewer Lulu Garcia-Navarro, unpacking the labor and wage dynamics of American life in the context of housing: Americans managed to house themselves before the mass-immigration era (foreign-born workers now account for about a third of building industry jobs). 

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The United States also had greater labor force participation among native-born men before the era of mass-immigration, Vance implied.

What do the numbers show? Foreign-born men in jobs outpace all men’s labor force participation by double digits, a fact held up by both immigration-advocates and critics. Since the St. Louis Federal Reserve started tracking foreign-born male labor force participation in 2007, foreigners have consistently led the general male population by around 20 points. 

It’s no question working aged male labor force participation has declined since the 1960s. Prime-aged male labor force participation has plummeted from highs of 98% in 1958 to around 87% today. 

Are depressed wages to blame? 

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There could be multiple causes. Increasingly, higher education has been seen as the path to employment amidst the country’s decades-long transition from manufacturing to the service sector as the dominant mode of employment. But, working-aged male data accounts for the years men would be enrolled in college. Americans’ declining health could also play a role.

 Increased participation in the labor market by women since the 1970s has also coincided with the acceleration of working aged males dropping out of the labor force. An increase in female workers could also exert the same downward pressure on wages in the face of increasing supply. 

In any case, the increasing share of immigrants in the labor force has coincided with the later decline in native-born male workforce participation. According to the Migration Policy Institute, immigrants’ share of the U.S. labor force has more than tripled since 1970, when they accounted for approximately 5% of the civilian labor force. Today that figure hovers around 19%. 

Cratering working-aged male workforce participation, compounded by the gap in employment between foreign-born males and the native-born may factor into the staggering gender gap between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in polling. 

The Democrats’ problem with male voters has been waved away as ‘misogyny’. Could men’s economic prospects, rather, have something to do with it? 

On immigration’s downward wage-pressures, Vance asked Garcia-Navarro: “Why try to reenage an American citizen in a good job if you can just import somebody from Central America who is going to work under the table for poverty wages?” 

Behind Vance’s penetrating question is another simple economic reality: the “reservation price” of a good or service. Just like in an eBay auction, the “reservation price” is the lowest price at which selling an item — including a commodity like one’s own labor — is worthwhile. 

Whatever economic correlations and coincidences drive the rate of workforce participation, it is clear that more than 7 million American males’ “reservation price” has gone unmet.